labor

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Reality TV: Hollywood's Sweatshop
Reality TV: Hollywood's Sweatshop

Reality TV: Hollywood's Sweatshop

Producers make contestants suffer to bring out the drama

(Newser) - They work up to 20 hours a day, often without breaks, and usually for no pay. Sometimes they're a little tipsy. Welcome to the secret lives of reality TV contestants. With no union to represent them, these “performers” suffer grueling conditions, the New York Times reports. “They locked...

Doctors Urged to Induce Labor Less Often

New guidelines warn of risky 'epidemic' in US hospitals

(Newser) - New guidelines out today urge US doctors not to induce labor earlier than 39 weeks into a pregnancy unless there are compelling medical reasons, the Houston Chronicle reports. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued its first statement on induced labor since 1999, with the lead author calling it...

Gossip Site Broke Labor Laws With Octomom: Calif.

RadarOnline allegedly lacked permit to film minors

(Newser) - California labor officials have cited RadarOnline for breaking labor laws in its coverage of octuplet mom Nadya Suleman, the Los Angeles Times reports. On March 17, the day the first two of the octuplets returned home from the hospital, a crew filmed the infants for the gossip site without first...

UAW Overwhelmingly Backs GM Concessions
 UAW Overwhelmingly 
 Backs GM Concessions 
UPDATED

UAW Overwhelmingly Backs GM Concessions

(Newser) - United Auto Workers members have ratified a package of concessions designed to reduce General Motors' labor costs. Union president Ron Gettelfinger said today 74% of GM's production and skilled-trade workers voted in favor. The vote comes before the company's expected Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing Monday. Bankruptcy experts say having...

Tomatoes Bring Fair-Trade Movement Stateside

Meager pay, slavery conditions for pickers prompt boycott threat

(Newser) - With tomato pickers earning 45 cents per 32-pound bucket—the same wage as 30 years ago—fair-labor coalitions have long staged protests and boycotts. Now one of the country's biggest food-services companies is taking up the cause, the Washington Post reports. Bon Appetit says that if growers don't agree to...

Actors Union, Hollywood Studios Make Tentative Deal

(Newser) - Nearly 10 months after their previous contract expired, the Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood’s major film and TV studios have a tentative agreement for a 2-year deal, the Los Angeles Times reports. Few details of the deal, which must be ratified by the union’s 120,000 members, were...

Want a Mind-Blowing Orgasm? Have a Kid

Labor pains can be overwhelmed by pleasure, some say

(Newser) - Going into labor, most women would agree, is not much fun. But for Amber Hartnell of Hawaii, childbirth offered "the most overwhelming pleasure I have ever felt in my life"—a 4-hour sexual climax. As the Guardian reports, she's one of the women in a recent documentary on...

Terrorism? Nah: French Love Kidnapping Bosses

Laborers 'sequester' Sony chief to get better pay

(Newser) - One country’s act of industrial terror is another’s negotiation tactic, the Independent reports. Disgruntled Sony workers in France weren’t shy about locking their bosses inside a factory overnight with trunks and tree branches, demanding better severance packages after job cuts were announced. Police didn’t interfere with...

Europe's New Temp Worker Class Bears Recession Brunt

(Newser) - The new class of temporary workers created by European labor reform is suffering most in the current wave of job cuts, the Wall Street Journal reports, testing the new policies amid the threat of backlash. Short-term employees—easier and cheaper to fire than permanent ones—also get fewer unemployment benefits,...

Male-Dominated Industries Bear Brunt of Job Losses

Construction, manufacturing cuts disproportionately hit men

(Newser) - The gap between men's and women’s unemployment is at a 25-year high because job cuts have hit especially hard in male-dominated industries like construction and manufacturing, reports Reuters. Some 80% of the nearly 3 million workers who lost jobs between November 2007 and November 2008 were men. Women hold...

Developing World Needs More Sweatshops: Kristof
Developing World Needs
More Sweatshops: Kristof
OPINION

Developing World Needs More Sweatshops: Kristof

Yes, they're ugly by US standards, but many nations' poor toil in much uglier conditions

(Newser) - Before Barack Obama follows through on tough talk about global “labor standards,” Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wants to take him to a certain garbage heap in Cambodia. Here, where families live in shacks, scavenging in the hot sun, a sweatshop job is “a cherished...

US Jobs Picture Even Worse Than It Looks
 US Jobs Picture
 Even Worse Than It Looks 
ANALYSIS

US Jobs Picture Even Worse Than It Looks

6.7% unemployment figure doesn't count those not working or looking for work

(Newser) - As bad as today’s jobs report seemed, it actually soft-pedals the US employment situation, David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times. In November, 251,000 workers lost their jobs, driving the unemployment rate to 6.7%. But “unemployed” describes only individuals actively looking for work, and the...

Fired Workers Kill Boss in India

Workers, invited to negotiate, beat Indian chief of Italian manufacturing firm to death

(Newser) - An angry mob of laid-off workers killed their former boss at an Italian manufacturing firm in India yesterday, the Independent reports. Lalit Kishore Choudhary, who oversaw Oerlikon Graziano’s auto-parts business in India, was bludgeoned to death with iron bars as he tried to negotiate with the disgruntled former employees....

The Rich Get Richer, Work Harder
 The Rich 
 Get Richer, 
 Work Harder 
OPINION

The Rich Get Richer, Work Harder

Wealth disparities are what's keeping big earners sweating

(Newser) - America’s higher earners are working harder all the time —but it’s not because of PDAs and laptops. It’s because of a fear of being “left behind” as wealth gaps widen among the upper classes, writes Dalton Conley in the New York Times. “Rising inequality...

Union Ad Urges Vets to Abandon McCain

AFL-CIO spot aims to separate war record from economic policy

(Newser) - Worried about the appeal John McCain has for military veterans among its members, the AFL-CIO is launching an advertising campaign criticizing the Republican's economic policies, the Chicago Tribune reports. The union will spend $53.4 million on the campaign, running mainly in places like Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia— battleground...

Actors' Family Feud Creates More Hollywood Labor Unrest

Larger SAG, with contract set to expire, aims to torpedo smaller union's deal

(Newser) - In the escalation of a long-simmering turf war, the largest Hollywood actors union is attempting to scuttle a deal reached by its smaller rival with studios, the Los Angeles Times reports. Though the Screen Actors Guild isn't planning to strike when its contract expires tonight, it's urging members who also...

Labor Blasts Obama's Top Economist
Labor Blasts Obama's Top Economist

Labor Blasts Obama's Top Economist

Unions worry that candidate is tilting toward Wall Street

(Newser) - After locking up the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama moved quickly to bring Clinton supporters into his general election tent, including Robert Rubin, President Clinton's treasury secretary. Jason Furman, an economist closely associated with Rubin, was hired as economic policy director, and that's provoked the ire of labor unions, who see...

NFL Owners Opt Out of Collective Bargaining Agreement

End of labor deal could lead to 2011 lockout

(Newser) - As the NFL deals with Spygate's embarrassment, an even bigger concern has appeared on the horizon: the league's owners voted unanimously yesterday to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement, which could lead to a lockout in 2011. Commissioner Roger Goodell insists that there will be at least three...

What Does This Man Have to Do to Get Fired?

Kerviel cost SocGen $7.2B, but law says he can't be sacked—yet

(Newser) - Make no mistake, Société Générale would like to fire Jérôme Kerviel, the rogue trader who cost the bank $7.2 billion. But under French labor laws, he can’t be dismissed without a formal sit-down to discuss his employer's problems with his performance. That will...

Starbucks' Union-Busting Campaign Before Judge

Brewhaha over coffee bosses' plot to stop baristas from organizing

(Newser) - Starbucks bosses trying to stop baristas from union organizing did some internet sleuthing to discover who had graduated from a university labor program—and even had Halloween partygoers snooped on, the Wall Street Journal reports. Starbucks' own emails detailing "our attempts to thwart a potential union situation" by identifying...

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